empty promises and bridges to nowhere
by Perchance A Primrose
Summary: Life is just a bunch of empty promises and bridges that don't lead anywhere. A set of oneshots, drabbles and free-verse that center around the Next-Gen kids.
1. My Favorite Things

Lucy took a deep breath of his hair as she hugged him because she knew it was going to the last time. It was going to be the last time she felt his wiry body pressed against hers and she truly was going to miss it. She breathed in his scent, that peculiar mixture of hazelnut and boy, that she loved so much. Now that she was sitting here at their place (the Kracked Kettle, her favorite) in her chair (the purple one that she could curl up in) with her mug nearby (filled with her favorite cinnamon latte) and all of it was right next to his chair (the deep blue suede that made the greenish tint to his eyes shine) and his mug (filled with plain black coffee) made her almost wish that she didn't have to do this, but she couldn't do that to him.

"Are you okay?" He asked, his voice soft and sweet like always. Why did he have to make this so hard? She supposed that was the problem, he didn't see it coming at all so he wasn't trying to make it worse for her, he was just being himself.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Lucy said, trying not to sound so distant. "Listen, Scorp..."

"Lucy, I've been meaning to tell you something but I wanted to wait a while longer but I really just feel like this is the best time." He looked so innocent as his eyes widened with excitement. "But you should go first!" He added quickly. Lucy smiled at him. She didn't want to but he was just so adorable. After all, his innocence was one of the things that had drawn her to him in the first place.

"No, really, you go first." She urged, knowing that if she went first there was no way that he would tell her what he was thinking.

"Please, Luce, just tell me what you need to." Of course, Mrs. Malfoy had raised her son right and he had the best pureblood manners, which said that the lady always went first. Even if, in Lucy's case, most people wouldn't consider her a lady if they knew the truth. She grimaced as she picked up her mug. She really didn't want to do this but she had to. She couldn't risk getting too close because if she got to close then they would start to notice the patterns and then they would figure it out especially with him. He was so smart that it scared her sometimes. It was the reason that her world was so messed up. It was the reason she was known as the Weasley skank at school. It was the reason behind everything she did. Because she couldn't take a chance of it messing everything up, it would ruin her entire family. It didn't matter how accepting they were because the rest of the world was already looking for a way to shut them out, to take them back and Lucy was damnned if she was going to give it to them.

"Scorpius, I really like you but I just don't know if this is the best thing for you." She started akwardly.

"What? The black coffee? I know, mother says it has too much caffenine in it but I only have it every once in a while and we both know that I much prefer tea anyway."

"No, Scorp, I'm not talking about the coffee." sighing, Lucy looked down into her mug. "Are you sure you don't want to go first?"

He took her small hand in his own and looked down at them intertwined. "No, it can wait. I want to hear what you have to say, I want to hear everything that you have to say. All the time, every thought that enters your head, every syllable that-"

"I think we need to break up." She cut him off with a wince. It was too late, he had gotten too attached.

"Wh-what?" He stuttered slightly, his greyish blue eyes wide with hurt. Lucy didn't have to open her eyes to know that, she could picture exactly what he would do because she had seen it so many times before. She wasn't even sure why she bothered anymore, especially if she knew how if had to end.

The bell above the door to the coffee shop twinkled in a way that seemed too cheerful to be leading out into the mist left over from the heavy rain they had gotten earlier. Opening her eyes, Lucy saw that he was gone.

No, it wasn't supposed to end like this! It was supposed to be fine. He was supposed to be the rational one like always. Scorpius was supposed to be the one who stayed! She needed him to stay because no matter how much she had to do this, she didn't want to, she wanted him to be attached, she wanted him to sit with her in their corner of the coffee shop, she wanted him!

"Scorp!" She ran after him. She couldn't let him leave, not like this. "Scorpius, please!" A flash of silvery blonde hair apparating away was the only thing she got. She stood there just stareing at the spot where he had been, not having any idea where he might have gone. Lucy didn't know how long she stood there, just staring.

"Miss, I think you dropped something." A small elderly wizard smiled kindly as he held out the piece of paper before trotting away.

She gasped as she looked down. On the paper was a perfect replica of her own face in charcoal, complete with the odd curl in her hair behind her left earlobe. It was stunning, the most amazing thing she had ever seen. A tear slid down her face as the writing at the top of the page caught her eye.

'To someone who shines brighter than any star in the galaxy. I love you."

Then the tears came faster down her face as she sank to the ground because tough, hard-ass Lucy Weasley, had just made the biggest mistake of her life by losing the boy who smelled like hazelnut.

**A/N: Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you thought about it. **

**Oh, and by the way, my Lucy is a werewolf. That's what she was afraid of them learning. **


	2. Carried Away On the Sands of Time

You watch as it all c r u m b l e s around you.  
>The <em>perfect <em>world, the _perfect _life, and the _perfect_ future with the _perfect_ girl.  
>Just one (okay, maybe a lot of them) wrong word,<br>and everything **everything ****everything** you ever dreamed of is  
>g<br>o  
>n<br>e  
>In the <em>blink<em> of an **eye**,  
>A <em>flash <em>of **light,**  
>or a <em>grain<em> of **sand**.

The girl with the crazy curls the color of the sunset  
>with eyes the color of the sky of one of the <em>perfect <em>_**perfect**__** perfect**_days

with skin that _perfect_ milky yellow color of egg nog that only she could pull off so _perfectly_  
>and lips the color of <em><strong>her <strong>_namesake.  
>The one who once took your world<br>that was so so damn sure of everything and turned it upside down,  
><strong>inside<strong>edisni **out**tuo  
>and all around<br>But it was all for the b e t t e r

Now, it's all  
>c<br>r  
>u<br>m  
>b<br>l  
>i<br>n  
>g<br>away  
>Now your not the boy you were before<br>and you sure as hell aren't the boy you were when you had _**her**_  
>But you have to seal up your c a k<br>r c s  
>and maybe someday you'll come out better than before <strong>her<strong>  
>(Everyone lies to themselves sometimes, right?)<p>

**A/N: Okay, so this is my first free verse so please be nice! Please review!**

**-Prim**


	3. Country Heather

Nikki smiled to herself as she took a deep breath, the smell of river water and heather filling her nose. The combination made her think of playing in the creek by the Burrow when she was little. She hated always hated the slimy feeling of the rocks that lined the bed. Chuckling, she remembered the time that James and Louis that pushed her in and ruined her favorite pink gingham dress. It was the closest she had ever gotten to murdering someone. The things that Nikki would do to go back to that time were unmentionable.

At 25 she was unmarried, unsuccessful, and at the moment homeless. It was official, she had hit rock bottom and at this point Nikki didn't see a point in trying to get back up. Maybe it was time for her to just give up and go back to England. Everyone had told her that moving to New York was crazy but she didn't listen. She had been so sure that she was right and that she was going to be famous that they would all be sorry for doubting her one day. But she had never been more wrong and it was finally time to admit it.

**A/N: I'm sorry if these are terrible, I'm just getting back into the swing of things **


	4. Cozy Fire

Vic sat in front of the fireplace in on one of the loveseats in the small coffee shop, staring into the hypnotic blaze and simply enjoying the silence. Well, at least the silence that was surrounding her. She sighed as quietly as possible but she still felt him stir beside her.

"You okay?" He asked in his sweet, caring, attentive way, his too caring way.

"Yeah," She tried to smile at him but she knew that he could tell that her heart wasn't in it. Actually, lately Vic wondered if Jude hadn't already figured out that her heart wasn't in much of anything at all because after all, how could you put your heart into something when it belong to someone else, especially when the someone with your heart wasn't the one you were cuddled up with. But that was the problem, wasn't it? It wasn't that Jude was too caring or too nice, it was just that Jude was too Jude and he wasn't Teddy.

Teddy, the boy who was her best friend and her worst enemy at the same time, the boy who could manage to make her so angry that she wanted to punch him in the face and made her love him so much it hurt. He the boy who drove her absolutely insane but she couldn't imagine a life without him. Although that was what she had right now, she hadn't seen him in months and hadn't talked to him in weeks, and it hurt. She felt like she had swallowed bluebell flames and they just kept burning.

Vic shook her head and nestled her head into the space between Jude's arm and chest taking a deep breath of his cologne, this was her new happy. This was the new Victoire who was going to be determined not to need Teddy Lupin.

As the door opened Vic got another whiff of Jude fragrant scent and couldn't help but wrinkle her nose. She had always hated cologne.


	5. Rainforest Crush

Lorcan Scamander looked at the brightly printed chair across from him. It was obviously meant for a small child with its rainforest pattern on it, complete with monkeys, panthers and pythons. He smiled to himself as he thought back to the period of time they had spent in the rainforest, as he remembered it, the rainforest always smelled like wet dog and the monkeys were most definitely not smiling. Although he was just that if someone asked Lysander about it, he would tell them that it was one of the greatest adventures of his life.

That was the difference between the identical twins, they make have matching DNA and looked exactly alike but for Lysander, everything was bluebirds, butterflies and rainbows while Lorcan was more likely to be realistic and rational. Lysander was the dreamer like mom and dad but someone had to be an adult and that was the role Lorcan was happy with. He liked being the responsible one, the one who people said 'I don't know what I would do without you' to, he liked bring the one in charge and he never had to wonder where he stood because of it.

Maybe that was why Lysander would always be happy swinging on vines and jumping out of trees, because he knew that Lorcan would always be there to pick him up, bandage him up and send him back out. He would be the real one while Lysander could keep on believing.


	6. Ivory and Coconut

"Hannah!" Victoire called as she walked into The Kracked Kettle. Victoire Weasley had always been close with Hannah and Neville both, even at times thinking of them as a second set of parents.

"Yes, dear?" Hannah's blonde bob poked around the corner, her cheeks were pink and she had a small swipe of flour across her nose which meant that she was baking. Vic was practically bouncing as she held out her left hand.

"Really?" The older woman threw her arms around the girl. Pulling back she kissed her on the cheek, "Of course the cake will be all white with delicate piping maybe a few sugar flowers, at least six or seven layers tall. Ooh, what about white cake with buttercream filling? Or maybe coconut would be better. Strawberry always goes well with your family, although then you have to worry about allergies. We could always do a different colored filling for each layer. That could be fun."

Victoire swung herself up onto the counter as she watched Hannah bustle about the kitchen babbling about the cake. She couldn't help but smile as she thought of the day she would finally be his forever.


	7. Not A Lancelot

"My white knight,

Not a Lancelot,

Nor an angel with wings.

Just someone who loves me"

"Aren't they just the perfect couple?" Lily sighed as Roxanne and her new wife waltzed around the room. They both seemed to both exude happiness and almost glowed with love. "I hope that one day I look at someone like that."

Rose couldn't help but think of her own relationship, if you could even call it that. As if he had a radar for when she was thinking about him, their eyes locked on each other from across the room. She almost stood up but then a swish of platinum blonde hair dashed in-between them. Of course she broke their stare, it was all her fault that they were in this situation, she had practically forced him to marry her and now that she wasn't pregnant he couldn't leave. He was never happy, he had never really wanted to marry her because she wasn't what he wanted but that was why he had Rose.

They were far from perfect and even farther from a pair of Saints but if it meant that she could lay in his arms and pretend that he was hers all the time, she would stay a sinner forever.

**A/N: Hope you like this! The prompt was White Knight and I used a quote from the song "White Knight" from the musical "The Music Man". The pairing was Teddy/Rose but I threw a little bit of Victoire in there for funzies Please review!**


	8. More Than Machinery

It was like a wave crashing down over him, crushing yet exhilarating. He was light headed from a combination of dancing mixed with thrashing his head around as he danced. People were packed in around him so tight that it was a battle just to do anything more than dance. The deafening bass thundering through his entire body, rocking him to the core so much that he couldn't tell what was the beat of the music and what was the beat of his own heart. But then again that was the point, wasn't it? Because here they weren't people, they didn't have pasts or futures to worry about; they were just sensations, one after another and it was the best thing he had ever felt.

Here he wasn't James Potter, the son of Harry Potter the famous action movie star. Here he was just James, just the 20-something guy from Somerset who lived in the crappy flat above the dive bar where he bartended a few nights a week. This life was simple and it was easy even though at times he had no idea how he was going to pay the rent or if he was going to be able to afford food.

But he didn't think about any of those things as the cacophony of the music combined with the sheer amount of bodies around him was a miraculous feeling because he just was and he didn't have to think about it. It was almost like being a machine, not thinking and just doing what you were programmed to do, just like life and not really control your own emotions.

In the back of his mind, James knew that come tomorrow morning he would wake up in his bed alone and he would be thrust back into life. It would be like nothing had ever changed because it hadn't, not really. He would run his hands through his hair like always and his stomach would growl, asking for food that he couldn't afford. But he would look up at the quote that someone (he couldn't remember who) had painted on the wall across from his bed,

"Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness."

And that would be all it took. James would remember that these feelings, these pains were the things that made him human and he couldn't hate them for that.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So it's been a while since I've written any fanfic so I'm trying to use these prompts to get back into the swing of things. **

**Prompts: ricochet, cacophony, battle. "more than machinery, we need humanity." –Charlie Chaplin. Au-theme: A non-magical band. I was kind of liberal with this one having James at a club where a band was playing.  
>Sorry, I feel like I'm rambling.<br>But anyway, please review and tell me what you thought! I would love any feedback!  
>-Prim<strong>


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